If I got five cents every time someone googled “How much does a Facebook ad cost?”this year I would have $432. How many Facebook ads could you buy? It depends. Yes, the answer to all your questions about Facebook ad cost is “It depends.”
It depends on what industry you’re in, who your competitors are, the time of year, time of day, how you target your audience, the content of your ads… and so on.
Ready for good news? The most important thing you can do to drive down your Facebook ad spend is in your control: measuring campaign performance and adjusting campaigns with data-driven decisions.
But how do you know if your costs are “good”or not? We processed the average Facebook ad cost data, painstakingly collected from Hootsuite and AdEspresso management, of over $636 million in ad spend in 2020-2021, and here’s the result: the benchmark cost for each type of Facebook ad.
How does Facebook ad pricing work?
First, a quick reminder: Facebook offers a variety of bidding strategies, but the most common type is the auction format. You set a budget and Facebook automatically bids for each ad placement trying to get the best results within that budget.
If you’re new to Facebook ads, it’s best to stick with automatic bidding strategies. Advanced users can manually set bid limits, but success requires a deep understanding of expected ROI and average conversion rates. (You can get all this data and more with Hootsuite Impact, which measures your paid and organic ROI together.)
The cost of advertising on Facebook depends on several aspects:
- Total account spending
- Campaign ad spend
- Daily budget (when using this method)
- Cost Per Action or Conversion
- Return on Advertising Investment (ROAS)
- Average bid per ad
11 factors that affect the cost of advertising on Facebook
What affects the cost of advertising on Facebook? So many things. Let’s run it:
1. Targeting your audience
It matters who you are trying to contact. On average, advertising for a narrower audience will cost more than for a broader one. It’s not bad.
Sure, you can spend $0.15 per click targeting the entire United States and only 1% of those clicks will turn into conversions. Or you can microtarget your ads only to your ideal customers – 30-50 year old coffee drinkers living in your city – and pay $0.65 per click but get a 10% conversion rate. What is really better?
On Facebook, this is as simple as creating a custom audience:
- Change location to where you are (or region or country/countries if you sell online).
- Editing the age range and other demographic targeting.
- Including interest related to your business. In this case, people are interested in coffee, which could mean they follow coffee brands or Pages, click on other coffee ads, or any other creepy way Facebook collects information about us.
Did you know that Facebook keeps a list of each user’s interests specifically for ad targeting? If not, then you’re not alone – 74% of Facebook users don’t know it either.
Nearly a third of users say their list doesn’t accurately reflect them, but after checking mine, it’s hard to argue with data science as follows:
Although even supercomputers are wrong:
2. Your industry
Some industries are more competitive than others for advertising space, which affects the cost of advertising. Advertising costs usually go up the higher the price of your product or the higher the value of the lead you are trying to generate.
For example, financial services are much more competitive than the T-shirt business. Here are some examples from retail to illustrate how costs can change even in the same sector.
Source: Marketing Charts.
3. Your competitors
Yes, even the smallest companies can succeed with Facebook ads. Also, yes, it will be more difficult for you when you run into advertising giants.
Starting a children’s toy business? Great. In 2020, Disney spent $213 million on Facebook mobile ads. Opening a home improvement store? Walmart spent $41 million on advertising.
What does your $50 daily Facebook ad budget look like right now?
These numbers should not dissuade you. The key to lower costs and high ROI is to differentiate yourself from the competition. Be aware of what your competitors are doing, but don’t let that influence how you place your ads. Be smarter, know what you’re up against and make a plan to win.
4. Seasons and holidays
Launch flower ads on July 15th? $1.50
The cost of advertising flowers on February 13? $99.99
Okay, not actual data, but you get the idea. Time is everything. The cost can vary greatly depending on the season, holidays or special industry events.
A classic example is Black Friday and Cyber Monday ads. As we all know, the biggest shopping days of the year: On Black Friday alone, some brands spend up to $6 million on digital advertising. Youza.
For the same reasons, advertising in December is notoriously expensive.
5. Time of day
Rates tend to be lower between midnight and 6am as there is usually less competition at that time, but not always.
By default, ads run 24/7, but you can create your own schedule for times of day up to the hour.
However, don’t feel like you have to stick to standard business hours if you’re advertising B2B. Approximately 95% of Facebook ad views are on mobile, including when people mindlessly scroll before bed.
6. Your location
Or, more accurately, the location of your audience. It costs about $35 to reach 1,000 Americans with Facebook ads in 2021, but in many other countries it’s only $1 to reach 1,000 people.
The average cost per country varies widely, from $3.85 in South Korea to 10 cents in India.
Source: Statistics
7. Your bidding strategy
Facebook offers 3 different types of bid strategies to choose from. The right choice for your campaign will significantly reduce your costs.
For all of them, you still need to set a total campaign budget, which can be either a daily budget or a total lifetime budget.
Source: Facebook
Budget Based Rates
These strategies use your budget as the deciding factor. Choose between:
- Lowest Cost: Get the most conversions possible within your budget at the lowest cost per conversion (or cost per result).
- Highest Value: Spend more on each conversion, but focus on doing more expensive activities like selling larger items or generating valuable leads.
Goal Based Betting
They get the most bang for your ad spend.
- Cost Cap: Get the maximum number of conversions or actions while keeping your costs relatively stable from month to month. This gives you predictable profitability, although costs may vary.
- Minimum Return On Ad Spend (ROAS): The most aggressive strategy to reach your goals. Set your desired return percentage, such as 120% ROI, and Ads Manager will optimize your bids to try and achieve it.
Manual bidding
As it sounds, manual bidding allows you to set a maximum bid for all ad auctions in your campaign, and Facebook will pay the amount needed to win placement, up to your cap. So you can achieve low costs and great results if you have the necessary Facebook advertising experience and your own analytics to set the right amounts.
8. Your ad formats
One ad format —video, image, carousel, etc.—doesn’t necessarily cost more than another, but it will cost you more than it should if it doesn’t best fit your campaign goal.
If you’re selling clothes online, an ad with a big sale or coupon can make a profit. But lifestyle videos or carousel ads that show your clothes in front of people are likely to be more effective at getting clicks that lead to real sales.
What works for you, you need to experiment to find out. Either way, your ad format can have a huge positive or negative impact on your Facebook ad spend.
9. Purpose of your campaign
Setting your campaign objective correctly is the single most important thing you can do to control your Facebook ad spend (and ensure success). CPC benchmarks are provided in the following section for each goal, which is divided into 5 categories:
- Impression
- Achieve
- Lead generation
- Conversions
- Clicks on links
When you set up your campaign, it looks like this:
The average CPC varies up to 164% depending on the objectives of the Facebook ad campaign, from $0.18 to $1.85. Choosing the right one for your campaign is probably the most important thing you’ll do throughout the year. No pressure.
10. Your quality, engagement and conversion
Facebook counts how many clicks, likes, comments, and shares your ad gets to get Quality Scores. There are 3 to watch:
- Quality Rating: A somewhat mixed “overall quality”rating, according to Facebook. The focus is on Relevance Score, which assesses how relevant ads are to the target audience and user reviews compared to similar ads from other advertisers.
- Engagement Rank: How many people saw your ad compared to those who took action on it, and how that compares to other advertisers.
- Conversion Rate Ranking: The expected conversion of your ad compared to other ads competing for the same audience and goal.
Engagement metrics are nothing new when it comes to how the Facebook algorithm decides what to show users. But the same rules apply to your ads: make quality material, otherwise no one will see it.
A high ranking quality gives you a more competitive bid, which can be the difference between winning an ad auction or not.
After your ad has run for a while, you can find this information in Ads Manager. Click on your campaign, then on the third tab, Campaign Ads. You will receive points:
- Above average (woo!)
- Average
- Below Average: Bottom 35% of Ads
- Below Average: Bottom 20%
- “I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed.”(Actually, it will still say “Below Average”and that’s the bottom 10%.)
Check your Quality Scores regularly and focus on setting your Quality Scores below average to boost their scores rather than creating new ads.
11. Gap between paid and organic campaign performance
One of the best ways to lower your Facebook ad costs is to regularly monitor and optimize your campaigns. Easier said than done when you don’t have the data you need. Hootsuite Social Advertising allows you to plan, manage, edit and analyze the results of all your paid and organic content together – across all channels.
See how all of your social marketing works together and seize optimization opportunities before they go away with quick and actionable insights. Plus, you’ll save tons of time planning and scheduling paid and organic content in the same space.
How much does Facebook advertising cost in 2022?
Standard disclaimer: These are tests, and while we think they’re pretty darn accurate, your results may vary. Just because your results aren’t working doesn’t mean your campaigns aren’t working. Use this data as a guide, but take it with a grain of salt.
It’s time to raise the flags of our nerds – here’s the data on how much Facebook ads will cost you in 2022.
Cost Per Click (CPC) Facebook Ad Cost Metrics
Cost per click, by month
2021 started off with low CPCs and then rose throughout the year. This is a typical annual trend, with the exception of 2020, which was the opposite, albeit an anomaly, with the onset of COVID-19 in the second quarter.
In 2020, the lowest CPC in April was $0.33. This is 23% lower than in April 2019. This makes sense since CPC is largely based on competition and many advertisers have taken their ads offline as the pandemic has spread.
Comparing this to 2021, we see the typical range of lower CPCs in the first quarter widen to an annual high in the fourth quarter, driven by holiday shopping and competition from ecommerce advertisers.
What this means for your Facebook ads in 2022:
- Yes, in 2022 advertising is likely to cost more than in the previous 2 years. Optimizing your campaign objective and ad quality is the best strategy to maximize your ROI.
- Not trying to reach a B2C audience? Consider cutting back on Facebook ads in the fourth quarter to avoid competition from e-commerce brands and higher costs. (Instead, focus on other areas of digital marketing.)
- Plan ahead for a likely drop in Q1 2023: Prepare your campaigns early to take advantage of the lowest CPCs of the entire year.
Cost per click by day of the week
Cost per click Facebook ad spend is usually lower on weekends. Why? Underlying Supply and Demand: Even with the same number of advertisers, social media usage is higher on weekends. This means more ad space is available, so you can win auctions at lower bids.
However, it’s not that much of a difference, so don’t bet on an ad campaign that runs all Saturday. Back in 2019, weekend CPC was $0.10 cheaper, while in 2020 and 2021 CPC was only 2 or 3 cents less. (Except for the second quarter of 2020, right during the pandemic, when advertisers paused many campaigns.)
Here are the data for 2020:
And for 2021:
What this means for your Facebook ads in 2022:
- Nothing, for most people. Run your ads 7 days a week unless you have solid data suggesting your customers will hibernate underground for the weekend.
Cost per click by time of day
Clicks will cost you less from midnight to 6am (viewer’s local timezone), but should you only offer ads to those with insomnia? (Selling pillows, coffee, sleeping pills or carbohydrates? Yes.)
In 2020, the average CPC didn’t drop too much overnight.
In 2021, CPCs have steadily declined into the wee hours, possibly due to many brands only scheduling their campaigns to run during the daytime, so more ad space is available.
What this means for your Facebook ads in 2022:
- Most likely, you don’t need to set a specific schedule for your ads. Run your campaign 24/7 and let Facebook maximize your clicks based on your campaign objective.
Cost Per Click, By Target
Now this is important. CPC varies a lot depending on your campaign goal, and 2020 and 2021 generally saw the same patterns, with one exception: impressions.
With the exception of the third quarter, ad views are much more expensive in 2020 than they were in 2021.
The 2021 data does not yet include the fourth quarter, but the CPC is always higher in the last quarter. However, you can see how important it is to set the right campaign objective in order for Facebook ad spend to remain profitable.
What this means for your Facebook ads in 2022:
- Always consider your goal in the context of the season: they work together. All Goal spending is higher in the fourth quarter due to increased competition, so instead of planning to spend $1,000 each month, consider spending $500 in the first half and $1,500 in the second (or vice versa, depending on your audience).
- Facebook is really good at optimizing your campaign to achieve your goal. Let him do his job.
- CPC for lead generation is cheaper than conversion campaigns. This means that instead of forcing people to click through to your landing page, it may be more cost-effective to use Facebook’s built-in lead capture form for the purpose of their lead generation campaign.
- However, for sales or more complex lead generation, conversion campaigns are good for optimizing intent. This means that people who see your ad are more likely to buy something or take another high-intent action.
- Impressions can be cheap, but save them for brand awareness campaigns. Need traffic? Lead generation, clicks or conversions is what you need.
Cost Per Like: Facebook Ad Cost Metrics
Like campaigns increase the audience of your Facebook Page. This can boost your social media growth if you target the right people who will stay with you for the long haul.
Like cost, by month
If we compare 2020 and 2021, we get very different results here. In 2020, CPL dropped sharply at the start of the pandemic (as did all ads), but rebounded in the third and fourth quarters as brands built up their audience to prepare for Black Friday/holiday. shopping season.
This theory is supported by the drop in December 2020, when the CPL almost equaled the $0.11 ultra-low in April 2020, although year-end budgets may have been used up by then as well.
CPC hit new highs in 2021, and that trend won’t slow down in 2022. The average CPC is now $0.38, including a maximum of $0.52 in May 2021! This is higher than some average CPCs for conversion campaigns. For now, it’s best to use your budget to run pay-per-click campaigns.
What this means for your Facebook ads in 2022:
- If you still want to expand your Facebook page audience with a CPL campaign, try remarketing ads instead of a regular cold campaign. You can create a lookalike audience, add your customer list, or create a custom target audience.
Like cost, by day
Compared to CPC campaigns, the day of the week matters a lot more when it comes to cost per like. In 2020, Tuesday and Wednesday were the cheapest days. Monday too, except Q1.
There have been big changes in 2021: likes were much cheaper on weekends, although still much more expensive than in 2020, but on weekdays? Oh. Spending was across the map every quarter, with some peaking at $1.20 per like.
$1.20?! There are many other marketing activities you can take to make better use of $1.20.
What this means for your Facebook ads in 2022:
- Just because Tuesdays are cheaper in one quarter doesn’t mean they will be cheaper in the next quarter. Lesson learned? Use automatic bidding and let Facebook optimize your ad delivery.
Like cost by time of day
As with pay-per-click campaigns, the cost per like drops at night, especially between midnight and 6am. However, the 2020 data was quite the opposite, with CPL at its highest in the first quarter from midnight to around 4am. (Everyone was out of work watching Netflix and flipping through their phone or what?)
In 2021, those numbers are back to the average pattern we’ve been seeing for years:
What this means for your Facebook ads in 2022: